Its an outrage!

A couple of weeks ago a website published nude photos of celebrity women Megan Good, Kim Kardashian, Vanessa Hudgens, Rihanna, Jenny McCarthy, Kate Bosworth, Mary-Kate Olsen, Avril Lavigne, Hayden Panettiere, Lake Bell and Gabrielle Union among others were published. For this and other stories follow this link.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/09/01/jennifer-lawrence-nude-photo-leak-isnt-a-scandal-its-a-sex-crime/

In my country, Zimbabwe videos of private intimate photos and videos have been published of Pokello Nare, the Miss Zimbabwe, Thabiso Phiri who then had to resign because of the photos leak, as well as Tinopona Katsande whose sex video with a boyfriend was also leaked on social media and sparked a media frenzy. The one thing common about these women is that they are intelligent beautiful women who are successful in their own respective rights. But suddenly they cannot penetrate the glass ceiling because they are viewed as little more that objects whose beauty has been reduced to fodder for pimply teens to jerk to.

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Yes the Leak of those sex videos and photos is not a scandal it is a crime. And not just a crime against the individuals involved but also a violation of women themselves. It is a crime of hate.it is an outrage
Why do I never see photos leaked of men with big bellies, and hanging everythings? Why????
Its like we have to apologise for being women, for being created the way we were.

I stand against this madness.

I killed men today

I was there with thousand others in Coppa cabanna as we stood aside and did nothing, craning our necks to see the soldiers beat up the faceless nameless unwashed hwindis whose problems and running battles with the soldiers and police we did not need to remember because for one they deserved it, two it was none of our business, three I have enough problems of my own…and any number of reasons to fill in the blank spaces. I watched as the soldiers dragged the poor unarmed young and old hwindis out of the kombis, whip them up, kick them and pound their heads with sadistic glee. I was there when they were stripped of their dignity and were reduced to begging pulps. I was there. And I did nothing but kill each one of the soldiers in my mind.

What gives a soldier the right to beat up a civilian, or two, or three, or ten or twenty? They bellowed that the hwindis refused to carry them to work, for free, in the morning. They reiterated their entitlement to such benefit because they defend this country and are by consequence entitled to treatment as “staff” munyika yababa Chatunga. What or who has brainwashed these man and women of the uniform into a warped sense of importance? Does it have anything to do with restlessness or unsatisfactory pay days which frustrate them into beating up ordinary civilians who have in this particular case, been systematically excluded from recourse? Such tyranny. There surely can be no amount of justification can be enough to justify the protector turning into the tormentor.

What makes a citizen give up his power? The power accruing to her or him through the social contract?

Our minds have been colonised by fear

Our will by complacency

We stood aside today because it did not concern us, and besides who was I to do anything when the Police themselves were turning a blind eye? What happens tomorrow then when the soldiers beat up my brother, your father, my mother our mother and our grandmother because they can and we have allowed them to? What happens when your child, niece or nephew is initiated into that culture of hooliganism because it is the one that obtains in the community and country in which they live in? Will the same reasons for complacency obtain? Will the discourse take up new and different meaning when the protagonists are closer to our bossoms?

We must never forget that Hwindis are honest (most times anyway) men and women, you and I trying to make a living and to fend for their families by trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents split many ways among the Police, Council, Zimra , Zinara, Sakunda, Zbc, rent, fees, livelihood……. and that when we stand aside we are waiting in line.

Our kids and grandchildren and generations after them will one day ask us why we stood aside and let our country degenerate to levels of no return like this and we will have no answer but to face the truth, the fact of our cowardice.

The bells may today toll for our neighbour but tomorrow, they will toll for us.

 

When we stand aside, we wait in line

 

 

On Friday I finish work early. I normally cannot wait for Fridays because then it means I can just rush home to sleep and wind down.

This Friday however I could not go home early because the Kombi fare has risen by 100% and I had to wait for those mshikashika kombis because they charge me affordably less . To say that I was angry is an understatement. To say that I was pained is to belittle the emotion I felt on that day. I was standing there with many people who were as stumped as I was that the kombi fare had so dramatically risen thanks to kombis being required to rank in Coventry road by City Council. I went to the city of Harare guys and asked them why the fare had been hiked and they said it was none of their business they were just implementing what they had been told to do. I was told to talk to the Kombi owners. I did. And they said they were not going to lie to me. Any chance they got to hike fees was welcome but also that as it was there were no laws governing the amounts which should be paid by passengers and that for as long as the Road Motor Transport regulator at Mukwati Building did not regulate the fees, the consumer, meaning me, I had no recourse whatsoever. I really felt like crying.

In fact I did.

I looked at the old men and women around me who were stranded because as it was they were already too far strapped to pay even the five rand required by the Mshikashika kombis. They were too broke to go home. Too broke to buy food or even water. I wanted to go home. Just pay the damn dollar and go home to rest. Heck I deserved some rest. But I thought paying that dollar meant me sacrificing these women, men , children who were earning far below the datum line. It also meant that I was allowing for this madness to continue. It felt only fair to be part of a small civil resistance to stand in solidarity with others against the madness.

It did not help that my memory recalled having seen council workers tip-over vendor wares just the day before because they could not afford to pay the dollar per day required. My mind recalled that the President of the Country is ill informed about the affairs in his own party. How then shall I, mere woman that I am expect Him to know and address my bread and butter issues? to know the ills bedevilling the common man?

Somebody tell me. If this is not a crisis. what is? When will we finally rise to the occasion of standing up to speak against injustice, to speak against this madness.

Because when we stand aside, we wait in line.